Say someone got careless part way through drilling anchor points for float bags in gunwale of Royalex canoe, definitely not me, but someone…and drill ran inward and went half way through Royalex. How should one approach repairing this? Is this g-flex worthy or just leave it be and not worry about it?
Sorry the picture isn’t great
Gflex will make it look better and keep crud out.
Yeah that’s what I assumed. I thought about just adding some paint or something, but sounds like that’s not a great plan. I’m not too worried about cosmetic fix with location, just don’t want any additional debris or UV damage I haven’t done g-flex repair so I’ll do some research, but would 655 work better than 650 for this?
I wouldn’t buy g-flex for JUST for this fix. But if you have other things you know you’ll use use it for buy it. Otherwise, just sling a little silicon caulking in there and call it good (black would be most discreet but I’d just use whatever you have on hand).
Go get a plastic welder and melt a zip tie into the hole. A plastic welder is just a pencil soldering iron with a flat tip.’
I second this
Interesting idea…I imagine this working pretty well for gunwale, but do you think that would adhere to the royalex long term? Probably not going to buy a welder (more expensive than a small tube of 655) but maybe I’ll try to rig something else up to melt it.
I believe the outside of the Royalex is vinyl . Remove anything sticking out. Melt the zip tie all the way into the hole sealing the Royalex. Continue until the gunnel is full. Smooth with a razor.
Ages ago when I outfitted a Royalex canoe for float bags, I asked for advice here and some highly-experienced folks said that drilling through the hull, below the gunwale, was standard procedure and actually preferable to drilling through the gunwale (it’s more important to avoid weakening the gunwale than the hull, since at that location of the hull, it’s the gunwale that provides most of the stiffness anyway). Then I read some published info about it and the recommendations were the same. The point is, small holes in that area of the hull are basically harmless.
Yeah I assumed it wouldn’t cause any issue structurally, just was concerned from UV/debris wear on exposed core. I’m going to try the zip tie this weekend to make myself feel better.
At the time it seemed daunting to drill the hull for some reason, but looking back I’d probably do it differently now. Either way this is just for some small tandem bags and class 2 river tripping so should work fine for me.
A piece of LEGO plastic might work too. That way, there’s colour choices available.
